Former teacher, self-training Montessorian, in my 8th year of homeschooling; now homeschooling my 2 kids and 1 from another family (he's a 16yo who would like to be referred to as "Bob"), AND looking after my 2 nieces, 5yo and 2yo.

About Me

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Facilitator meeting done!

To homeschool in Alberta (for all of my non-Albertan readers), a family has to meet a couple of times per year with a teacher from a supervising school board. Nothing fancy, just write down a few things the kids have done, maybe look at some work samples.

I've always had my meetings rather late in the year--end of May or beginning of June. We had ours today, though, and I am REALLY liking how early it is. Why? Well, if it takes place at the end of May or later, then the kids flip into, "We're done!" mode. But, it's only mid-May. We are NOT done. (evil grin)

But that has me thinking about what to do for the next while. I may veer slightly towards a bit more structure and requirements, just to get my 2 working a bit more. Bob has to finish up his course work and study; he'll be done his exams 2nd week of June. That's when we'll be done, I think. After that, it's field trips and outings and baking and cleaning up and stuff like that. So, I still have a few more weeks to keep the others busy with things.

For ds, I think I'm going to go a little more Charlotte Mason for the next while: daily copywork, daily math, daily French spelling/grammar book, daily German; other than that, he can choose from science, geography, art, music, reading... I'll give him a daily form so he can write down what he's done, including whatever reading he does.

I'll take the same idea for dd, but without the daily copywork, and with an additional requirement to write a paragraph (or more) in French each day. For math, I think I'll give her the option to do the math stuff in Life of Fred (she's already read both books, just not actually done any of the math) or to do a worksheet that I'd prepare for her. I've also purchased the Montessori R&D chem and physics manuals, and since she's been working on chemistry, I could start showing some of that to her. So far, she's looked at the first 10 elements of the periodic table--which I should actually be finding ways for her to memorize as she wants to memorize them but needs to use them in some way--and we've talked a bit about what the atomic numbers mean. I know there will be plenty of activities in the manual and she may even come up with some of her own ideas once she gets going.

For my 5yo niece... I realized today I don't think I've ever presented the Golden Beads to her. If I did, it was very long ago and I never followed through. That's something I could work on with her. Her understanding of numerals from 0-12 is very good; I could also introduce her to the Teens Board. And, she has never had the opportunity to make a world map placemat using the puzzle map, so I could also present the Continent Puzzle Map and get her to the point of being able to make a placement.

For 2.5yo niece... I think I really need to start introducing everything I can from Gettman's first period and seeing it where it takes us. Both girls seem to have fallen into ridiculous play and have little attraction to former activities. I haven't really shown them anything new for sometime. I'll have to go through some lists of typical activities, start practising them and get myself ready to show them!

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Naturally, now that this year is almost done, my mind is already moving ahead to next year. I want to sit down and plan out everybody's year, even though I so often don't follow my plans. *sigh* Maybe it means I need to plan differently.